Democracies, Autocracies, and Political Stability
Transcript of Democracies, Autocracies, and Political Stability
International Social Science Review
Volume 90 | Issue 1 Article 1
2015
Democracies, Autocracies, and Political StabilityRollin F. TusalemArkansas State University
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr
Part of the Anthropology Commons, Communication Commons, Economics Commons,Geography Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, Political Science Commons, andthe Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in InternationalSocial Science Review by an authorized administrator of Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository.
Recommended CitationTusalem, Rollin F. (2015) "Democracies, Autocracies, and Political Stability," International Social Science Review: Vol. 90: Iss. 1, Article1.Available at: http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Democracies, Autocracies, and Political Stability
Cover Page FootnoteRollin F. Tusalem is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Arkansas State University.
This article is available in International Social Science Review: http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Democracies, Autocracies, and Political Stability
Since the third wave of democratization, many scholars have debated whether or not
there exist necessary prerequisites for the consolidation of democracies. In fact, democratic
transitions toward democracy cannot occur without the state achieving a semblance of
‘stateness,’1 as a state that has various ethnic groups or polarizing cleavages may bring about
political instability, which will make it unlikely for democracy to endure. Giovanni Sartori
argues that democracy cannot arise in societies that are prone to internal conflict.2 What a
country needs before it can experience the advent of democratic politics is domestic security
within its borders. A growing number of scholars, on the other hand, claim that the causal
relationship is reversed. Samuel Huntington3, Juan Linz
4, and Guillermo O’Donnell
5 all argue
that democracies are prone to political instability primarily because they invite political
pluralism. In other words, the large presence of interest groups and the mobilization of
independent associations can likely weaken the state from carrying out its capacity to govern
effectively. When economic modernization outpaces the development of democratic political
institutions, the likelihood for the emergence of political order and stability become highly
unlikely. As a result, coups, revolutions, and the breakdown of democratic institutions is a likely
scenario in highly democratic regimes. This article addresses the fundamental empirical question
of whether nation-states that are more democratic are more likely to be politically stable or
unstable over time.
Using a global model of 122 nation-states, the cases included represent a variety of
countries that experienced a legacy of colonialism, and accordingly are likely candidates to be
praetorian states in the Huntingtonian sense: states that are prone to strong-armed governments
and political instability.6 A majority of the states in the study are also considered patrimonial
1
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
states where government officials look at political offices and the natural resources of their
country as exploitable rents that can be plundered for private personal gain or as a means to favor
a particular ethnic or religious group. Due to the nature of client-patron relations and high levels
of corruption, these patrimonial states are prone to low levels of economic growth and hence are
more prone to higher levels of political instability, in particular the collapse of civilian
governments through civil wars, military intervention, political unrest, or prolonged
insurrectionist movements.7
A number of empirical works demonstrate the negative effect of democracy on political
stability. Bingham Powell establishes the linkage on how democracies fall prey to large-scale
political unrest.8 In his study of twenty-eight nation-states during the 1958-1976 period, he finds
that nation-states that had high levels of multi-party democracy experienced large-scale
instability in terms of political violence, strikes, rallies and protests. Since most of the nascent
democracies did not have party systems that are institutionalized, extremist groups took
advantage of the weakness of the current political system and brought about political mayhem in
the streets that weakened the legitimacy of elected governments. Alessina and Perroti show that
democracies are prone to large scale instability primarily because sectorial interests in a
pluralistic setting may bring about large scale income inequality.9 They found that democracies
are likely to generate higher levels of income inequality (measured by the share of the third and
fourth quintiles of income among a population). Thus, democratic systems are prone to generate
social discontent, which facilitates socio-political instability. As such, there is an indirect
relationship of income inequality causing a decrease of private and public investments. They
predicate the inverse relationship between socio-political instability on democracy based on
uncertainty – such that private entrepreneurs are discouraged from continued investment in a
2
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
nation-state blighted by assassination attempts, coup plots, and a high death rate based on
domestic disturbances.
Despite the empirical evidence concerning democracy’s inability to reign in political and
social order, other scholars suggest that democracies promote political stability in many ways.
First, democracies are known to provide a pacifying effect on social unrest by allowing citizens
to express dissatisfaction with the incumbent regime through the electoral process.10
Second,
democracies are known to provide a smooth transition from one elected leader to another without
political violence.11
Third, democratic regimes are known to be responsive to citizen needs and
the demands of the electorate which generates accountable, transparent, and efficient
governance.12
Democracies, due to the accompanying freedom of speech, are more reactive to
social problems before they lead to the destabilization of the state.13
Fourth, democracies are
known to value the pluralistic nature of ideas. Thus, democratic systems aim to settle political
conflict through meaningful debate and civilized discourse, leading to cultural values of
consensus seeking and compromise building, which can offset political instability coming from
minority groups in society.14
Fifth, democratic states allow citizens to exercise their right to
show displeasure about state policies without restraint from state authorities. This functions as a
safety valve that allows collective dissent to be organized, civil, and work under the rule of law,
thus obviating large scale demonstrations that can weaken state legitimacy.15
Sixth, scholars
allude to how democratic regimes are known to generate economic progress and development
more so than autocracies, thus leading to higher levels of citizen satisfaction with their quality of
life. 16
The task of this article is to address an empirical conundrum: Does democracy promote
political instability or does it have institutional mechanisms that induce political order? This
3
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
study allows us to go beyond the limitations of empirical studies that have made the link between
democracy and politically instability. For instance, the empirical studies previously mentioned
are not truly cross national in scope and thus do not allow one to make generalizations as to
whether or not regime type has an enduring effect on levels of political stability. Powell’s study
largely examines twenty-eight developed states, with most of them European.17
Alessina and
Perotti’s study are cross-sectional regressions examining seventy states, half of which are
economically developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere.18
The findings of this project add
to the scholarly conversation and provide a contemporary empirical testing of the question. This
article shall utilize a large cross-national study consisting of developing states which are at
highest risk of political unrest to answer this question.
This article examines 122 developing states that vary in terms of their level of ethnic and
religious fractionalization, which can affect their level of democratic development and political
stability. These countries are located in disparate regions of the world: from developing Asian
countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, India,
Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; to African patrimonial states like Nigeria, Kenya, the Republic
of Congo, and Zimbabwe; to Latin American polities that had varied experiences with civilian or
military dictatorships (like Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Chile) and those with
a long tradition of democracy (Costa Rica and Colombia); and post-communist polities like
Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Kazakhstan, which all share a socialist past. The analysis involves a
set of countries that endured a variety of regime types: from illiberal to liberal democracies to
civilian, personalistic, and military dictatorships, one-party autocratic rule, totalitarian rule, and
monarchical and sultanate type autocracies (like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman). Hence
4
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
the case selection gives this study an opportunity to test if higher levels of democracy are
conducive to political instability.
This article proceeds in six parts. The first part reviews literature that links democracy (as
a regime system) to political instability. The second part discusses why dictatorships are likely to
have a semblance of political stability over time. The third section offers theories as to why
democracies should experience higher levels of political stability. The fourth part provides a
brief overview of the variations in the levels of democracy among the cases. The fifth section
provides a set of hypotheses, conceptualizes and operationalizes the variables, and discuss the
results. The last part of the study concludes and offers theoretical insights.
Linking Democracy to Political Instability
One of the earliest studies documenting how democracies may not be a good regime
system for many states that just endured the decolonization process was Samuel Huntington’s
Political Order in Changing Societies.19
Huntington warns that democracies can breed instability
primarily if a country has not developed high levels of political development. What he means by
political development is the successful creation of political parties that are capable of translating
popular demands into policy proposals that the government can implement. Huntington argues
that the rapid development of the industrial economy and the rapid economic modernization that
it entails may place a stress on democratic institutions. Simply put, nascent democracies cannot
respond to mass public demands and expectations. Furthermore if economic development and
the pluralism of groups outpace the development of state institutions, political instability may
occur –which can eventually lead into long-term authoritarian phases.
Huntington adds that modernization, together with democratic pluralism, can lead to a
disruption of the traditional social groupings of society and an increase in social isolation as
5
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
individuals become more geographically mobile. This tendency to move from rural to urban
areas increases the potential for social alienation of the public and the type of vulnerability that
can lead people to join extremist groups. Huntington also alludes to a structural-strain argument.
As democracy leads to rising and falling incomes, generating large scale income inequalities,
people tend to develop higher expectations for social mobility, and when the state is incapable of
meeting rising demands for economic access and social mobility, personal grievances against the
existing social order may be manifested through turbulence in the streets and the increased
oppressiveness of the state.
This is the same sentiment expressed by Juan Linz in his early work on democracy.20
In
the Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Linz warns democracies are likely to experience the
pluralism of interest groups that can weaken the capacity of the state to maintain social order and
implement sound policy aimed at redistributing resources and addressing social problems. As
groups and factions not within the state are allowed to participate in the polity, Linz warns that
this may actually decrease the legitimacy of the state in the long term. Linz noted that interest
group hyper-pluralism can lead to the periodic breakdown of democracies.
Guillermo O’Donnell’s work on how authoritarian polities emerged in South America
reaffirms Linz’s instability theory on why republics in the region sometimes reverted back to
authoritarian episodes.21
He argues that populist democracies are inherently plagued by the
mobilization of populist societal groups that can exert an inordinate amount of pressure on elite
interests. Populist pressure facilitated the rise of military juntas and oppressive dictatorships in
South America. The rise of dictatorships and military juntas directly relates to the formation of
populist sentiments that democratic politics may stir.
6
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Similarly, the rise of democratic politics may even bring about economic
underdevelopment that may facilitate long-term political instability. Mancur Olson also argues
that special interest groups may apply pressure on the central government to privilege certain
sectors of society, leading to the disenfranchisement of others.22
Many democratic governments
may accord these groups key positions in government and craft policy that is advantageous to
one group and inimical to other groups. This disproportionate allocation of goods, resources, and
social services may trigger social rigidities and class conflict leading to long-term political
instability.
Without a doubt, democracies may ignite coups. In developing countries from 1970-
1990, many democratic states entertained socialist policies such as the redistribution of wealth,
income, and property to appease citizens that had long endured episodes of a hierarchical and
elitist class system. This facilitated the rise of the military as a politicized institution that was
largely reactionary and instigated rightist coups against democratic regimes.23
Gupta discovers
that polarized class tensions are always apparent in democracies. A political crisis arises when a
particular class demands wealth redistribution, which can increase the prospects of military
intervention in civilian politics.24
Such democratic states may in fact pay lip-service to the demands of populist orientations or
ideologies leading to the virtual expropriation of the wealth and property of the elites. Most of
the military in third world democracies shared the ideological interests of the elite class, in
particular the investing class who wanted to preserve their property rights from state attempts at
distributing resources equitably. The military became the servant of elite interests, and it became
interventionist when the state began to espouse public policies that threatened to nationalize and
expropriate private and personal property.25
Furthermore, the military did not intervene when
7
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
elite interests were secured from populist pressures. For example, in several African
democracies generals intervened when states began to promote socialist ideologies that
threatened elite interests.26
Coups that arise from wayward democracies are known as veto coups, wherein the military
asserts its vanguard role in controlling the redistributive demands coming from pressures from
the political left in a democratic system. These veto coups became paramount in Latin America
beginning with the removal of the populist dictator Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic in
1963, but they only became more commonplace after the removal of Salvador Allende by
General Pinochet in 1972, continuing well into the late 1980s in the rest of Latin America. The
rise of veto coups spread throughout the world much in response to democratic regimes that
infringed on the interests of the elite. In such regimes, the property less individuals would place
political pressure on politicians, by instigating unrest and political protest. As the government
became more sensitive to the interests of the average citizen (who did not possess property), they
implemented reforms, including redistribution of land and higher taxes for the rich. This often
triggered the elite to court the military institution to launch a coup to veto “out” populist policies
that curtailed the economic liberties and social dominance of an elite base.27
Democracies and Ethnic Dominant Minorities
Amy Chua’s recent work on market-dominant minorities warns that the advent of parallel
transitions to democracy and a capitalistic system are inimical to political stability.28
Through
various case studies, she argues that many democracies that attempt to initiate neo-liberal
economic reforms are prone to political violence. As one ethnic minority dominates the
economic sectors of society, this leads to a wage gap crisis, unemployment, and the large-scale
economic marginalization of an ethnically dominant class. When this occurs, there is an ethnic
8
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
majority backlash that can threaten the stability of democratic politics. For instance, the large
scale riots in Indonesia, which targeted the ethnic Chinese community during the post-Suharto
period, characterized the nature of the political violence that market dominant minorities in
democracies can bring.
There are many democracies that are prone to electing to government ethnic minority
groups that may have democratic aspirations. However, these democratic regimes do not survive
because ethnic majority groups not in power mobilize actively to topple them, as a heightened
sense of nationalism compels them. Accordingly, nationalism is such a pervasive force that
majority groups not in power will do everything in their capacity to oust democratic minority
governments by force because minority democratic rule is an “intolerable breech of political
propriety.”29
Minority groups that hold political power will lead to the creation of ethnic blocks
and the continued ethnicalization of political competition. 30
A political culture of mistrust and
intolerance develops which makes it difficult for political stability to arise.
Democratically elected minority presidents are susceptible to employing client-patron
relations in governance. Such ethnically divided societies may have democratic regimes that tend
to enact policies that do not promote the public good. Public service provision tends to be catered
to one narrow clientelistic group, especially when an ethnic minority group is in power. When
minority groups are in power, they also do not engage in policy activism. Granted, policies that
promote a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources may lead to one group losing
inordinate amounts of political and economic power; hence minority groups are prone to
maintain the status quo ante. Therefore, there is a tendency for fractionalized democratic
societies to formulate policies that promote status quo initiatives that do not empower or improve
the quality of lives of citizens—specifically those who are traditionally marginalized or
9
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
historically excluded from the political system. Naturally, this promotes higher levels of political
discord.
The nature of client-patron relations in developing democracies is also clearly apparent in
neo-patrimonial regimes in Africa where “the right to rule is ascribed to a person rather than to
an office.”31
Such neo-patrimonial attachments dictate that chief executives grant personal favors
and material inducements to their ethnic kin, while ethnic rivals are denied full political access.
Ethnic political patrons that have access to political power also form a durable relationship of
favoritism with their ethnic group. To a certain extent, this relationship of dependency generates
large scale political and economic losses to ethnic groups that are the ethnic rivals of presidents
and prime ministers. Furthermore, powerful chief executives who are members of a minority
group plunder state resources to grant political favors.32
These neo-patrimonial ties have also
been conceptualized as prebendalism. Thus, the political and legal system becomes favorable to
the ethnic group of the chief executive—largely eroding the political identity, civil liberties, and
economic freedoms of disfavored ethnic groups.33
Such exclusion, especially if it becomes
institutionalized, is prone to facilitating protracted political violence among clashing ethnic
groups.
Why Dictatorships Are More Stable Over Time
Naturally, dictatorships are logically capable of maintaining a semblance of political
order over time because of their virtual monopoly on violence and their capacity to restrain and
suppress political dissent with outmost ferocity. They can withstand pressures from civil society
either by co-opting its agenda through corporatism, or its outright purging from the political
system.34
In authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, there is no significant political pluralism that
can threaten the entrenched de jure and de facto monopoly on political power by political elites.
10
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Many states in the Middle East and Africa resisted the forces of democratic change
because of the dominance of the Rentier state economic system. By harnessing the wealth
associated with oil, autocratic states were able to pacify mass public demands for accountable
governance with entitlement and social welfare programs that financially protected citizens. Oil
wealth allowed many states to lessen or eliminate the burden of taxation, thus facilitating the
creation of a dictatorial redistributive state. Fareed Zakaria argues that such Rentier state
economic systems are responsible for the long-term political stability of autocracies.35
As
citizens are given free benefits and social inequities are dealt with appropriately by state
agencies, the public remains silent and does not apply pressure on the state in terms of enacting
political reforms. If there are no demands for changes in the political system, such autocracies
continue their monopoly on political power. Thus Rentier state autocracies remain politically
stable over time.36
Recent empirical analysis shows a more blurred picture on the relationship between
autocracies and long term political stability. According to research conducted by Przeworski and
his co-authors, if autocrats cannot control dissent against the state, such regimes are more likely
to collapse because any threat to legitimacy of the ruler may bring about capital investment flight
and economic decline, thus opening up the space for political dissent that can usher in prolonged
periods of political instability and ultimate regime change.37
The Relationship between Democracy and Political Stability
Despite works documenting how democracies are prone to political instability, there is
research to suggest that this perspective is largely incorrect. Robert Dahl’s work on democracy
established how democratic systems are more inherently stable than autocratic systems. For
instance, democratic states allow for citizens to contest the state within the rule of law, allowing
11
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
a safety valve upon which citizens can show dissatisfaction or resentment against state policies
without actively destabilizing or overthrowing the state.38
Countries with a longer democratic
experience also benefit from a safety net that absorbs citizen dissent and political conflict. That
safety net is the existence of contentious politics that is inherent in democracies with free, fair,
and competitive elections. They allow mass citizenries to vent their frustration at the ballot box
rather than in the streets. This also allows contending groups the opportunity to articulate their
grievances in an open space where they can openly influence political outcomes without
resorting to subversive acts.
Democratic polities strengthen political stability in three ways. First is through legalistic
norms that prohibit the state from making arbitrary decisions as mentioned by the sociologist
Max Weber.39
In autocracies, arbitrary decisions by the state may trigger political turbulence for
an already oppressed group or segment of the population. This can range from arbitrary arrests
without due process, forced abductions or disappearances of civilians, or the sudden
expropriation of wealth and property. Second, in democracies property rights and the
enforcement of contracts are more secure.40
For example, democratic systems lessen the
possibility of the state expropriating the property of civilians or repudiating their private
transactions.41
Overall, this lessens political turbulence because it promotes the economic well-
being of the majority of the population – inducing them not to rebel against the state.42
Thirdly,
democracies are known to be conducive to higher levels of economic development and macro-
economic stability. Such regimes, it is argued, systematically leads into the consolidation of
democratic politics even in ethnically fragmented states.43
Autocracies, on the other hand, are
more likely to be politically unstable over time by the nature of its institutional features and
reliance on oppression and arbitrary decisions.
12
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Hypotheses
At the outset, the theoretical section of this article explicated a research question, which
the following hypothesis attempts to answer:
Main Hypothesis 1: Developing states with higher levels of democracy are prone to
higher levels of political instability.
Although this is seen from the perspective of scholars who believe democracy spurs
populist tendencies and sectorial mobilization can destabilize the state,44
other scholars like Mark
Lichbach45
also formulate a countervailing theory arguing that the use of increasing repression
by dictatorships can lead into large scale political violence. Hence it is also possible that
autocracies are more likely to be politically unstable.
A series of sub-hypotheses will help to examine the role of other variables in affecting
variations on the levels of political stability among developing states. For example, extant
research demonstrates how political stability is affected by several variables, including ethnic
fractionalization, religious fractionalization, variations of levels of economic affluence, and
institutional features, which include parliamentarism and federalism. As discussed previously,
democracies are known to become chronically unstable because of the emergence of ethnic
dominant minorities who hold a larger share of the national wealth. This phenomenon draws
resentment from a country’s large ethnic-dominant minority population. Thus, levels of ethnic
fractionalization may induce political unrest among nation-states.46
Hence, sub-hypothesis 1:
Ethnically fractionalized states are more likely to experience higher levels of political instability.
Likewise, religious fractionalization, which afflicts most countries in the developing
world (as a result of colonial powers drawing borders not reflecting primordial religious
identities and sectarian divisions), may trigger higher levels of political unrest. Research by
13
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Collier and Hoeffler47
found that religiously divided polities are more likely to experience civil
conflict over time. Thus, sub-hypothesis 2: Religiously fractionalized states are more likely to
experience higher levels of political instability.
Economic affluence, as reflected by variations in a country’s Gross National Product may
also be a primary factor in triggering political unrest. Dipak Gupta finds that countries with
lower levels of economic affluence and economic development are more likely to face social
rigidities, upon which the population is prone to higher levels of economic dislocation as a result
of pervasive income inequities.48
Thus, poorer countries are likely to experience a large mass
base of the population experiencing relative deprivation vis-à-vis a minority in the population that
own most or have a greater share of a country’s wealth. This relative deprivation may manifest
itself through large scale violence which may affect the state’s ability to govern and reign in
political order. Countries that are not economically developed are chronically politically
unstable, which is reflected in sub-hypothesis 3: States which are economically underdeveloped
are more likely to experience political instability.
Scholars in comparative politics have also begun to look at the role of institutions in
facilitating political order and stability. Research by Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach,49
Juan
Linz,50
and more recently by John Gerring, Strom Thacker, and Carola Moreno,51
empirically
find that parliamentary systems are more politically stable over time compared to presidential
systems. This is due to parliamentary systems being more consensus-oriented due to coalitional
politics. Parliamentary systems also allow for multi-partism in national governance which can
defuse ethnic or religious tensions. They also have heads of governments that can simply be
removed by a single vote of non-confidence and not have executives that need to serve fixed
terms. Hence, such systems are less likely to experience coup d’états and military adventurism to
14
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
remove inefficient leaders. Furthermore, parliamentary systems are more likely to produce career
oriented politicians that have loyalty and experience, compared to political amateurs that
presidential systems may bring. It is also recognized that parliamentary system, because they are
more cohesive and unified organizationally, are less prone to bureaucratic gridlock and are more
likely to initiate much needed economic reforms without a protracted stalemate between divided
branches. Lastly, parliamentary systems are likely to avoid political instability because they are
more likely to enhance higher levels of economic, human and social development.52
Thus, the
sub-hypothesis 4: States that have parliamentary systems are more likely to be politically stable.
Federalism is also an institutional variable that is recognized to have a longstanding
effect on political stability. Scholars have generated mixed findings on its ability to reign in
political order. For instance, Erik Wibbels finds that federalism may in fact generate fiscal
irresponsibility on the part of the national government as sub-national units overspend and are
more likely to avoid the costs of fiscal adjustment.53
Federal states are more likely to experience
higher levels of macro-economic instability and are less likely to initiate economic reforms
aimed at curbing inflation, unemployment, and sound monetary policies. As a result, federal
states are more likely to be politically unstable over time. However, scholars like Lemco54
and
Filippov and his co-authors55
note how federalism promotes subsidiarity governance, upon
which nation-states divided by ethnicity and religion give autonomy to their local regions, states
and provinces, granting such sub-national units the ability to construct their own taxing,
education and spending policies. Thus, federal states are more responsive to the demands and
needs of their local constituents. Over time, the federalist principle of giving self-determination
to peripheral regions has a pacifying effect on political unrest. This supports sub-hypothesis 5:
States that have federal systems are more likely to be politically stable.
15
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Data and Methods
This paper seeks to empirically solve two questions: (1) Do higher levels of democracy
promote higher levels of political instability and (2) Are autocracies are more likely to promote
higher levels of political stability.
It is important to describe the nature of the data and methods used in this research. First,
the operationalization of the democracy variable is author-created utilizing democracy indices
provided by several prominent organizations involved in the study of democracy. Second, the
study involves 122 developing states. For some of the regression models the number of states
was dropped to 101 because the Political Risk Rating measure (one of the dependent variables
used) is not available for some countries. Third, several measures are utilized to operationalize
levels of democracy and the extent of political stability as a way to add robustness to the results.
The Freedom House Index56
for the years 1974-2006 measures levels of democracy as a
proxy for a maximalist definition of democracy.57
Empirical evaluations of the scores collected
since 1974 show that it is consistently correlated with other democracy indices from other
sources, in particular the Polity IV index and the Vanhanen index.58
The Freedom House Index
has two scores: one on the degree of political freedoms of citizens (the right to free and fair
competitive elections, the right to political action, etc.) and the amount of civil liberties that
citizens have in each state (the right to protest, hold rallies, freedom of speech, and freedom of
religion). The average of both scores is derived which is ranked from a range of 1 to 7. The
scores are reversed for the sake of clarity and ease of presentation, with higher scores (such as 7)
connoting higher levels of democracy, while lower score (such as 1) denoting lower levels of
democracy. The averages of the two scores are computed which proxies for the prevailing level
of democracy for each state over a 32 year period. As shown in Table 1, countries in Asia have
16
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
an average score of 3.9 out of the 7 point democracy scale of the Freedom House index,
indicative that the region still has a substantial number of illiberal states that deprive their
citizens of basic political rights and freedoms. For example, North Korea still has a personalistic
totalitarian dictatorship under the Juche ideology of Kim Jong Il’s successor Kim Jong Un.
Cambodia still has to deal with the remnants of a long civil war, rendering its parliamentary
government incapable of guaranteeing full civil and political rights to its citizens. Nepal has also
scored quite low on the scale primarily because of the threat of a Maoist insurgency movement
and the autocratic tendencies of the state. The military regime in Myanmar which grabbed power
from Aung-Sang Su Kyii still deprives its citizens the opportunity to protest. The junta regime
has also continuously denied the Burmese of free, fair and competitive elections since British
independence. Laos, Vietnam and China are still ruled by a predominant Communist party
system that has denied their citizens a fair choice in choosing their political leaders. Lastly,
Malaysia scores low on the Freedom House scale primarily because of the predominance of a
one party state under the aegis of the United National Malay Organizations that has used
intimidation tactics against the political opposition particularly the oppositionist Anwar Ibrahim.
Table 1 Average Democracy Scores of World Regions and Rankings
Freedom House Score Vanhanen Democracy
Index
Democratic Age
(Polity IV)
Asia
3.92 (3)
6.570 (3)
5.931 (3)
Africa 3.68 (4) 3.301 (4) 4.347 (4)
Latin
America/Caribbean
5.40 (2)
11.953 (1)
20.583 (1)
Europe 5.49 (1) 7.973 (2) 8.727 (2)
17
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Middle East 3.48 (5) 1.015 (5) 0.250 (5)
*The rankings are in parentheses
In Latin America, most of the countries scored above the midpoint of 3.5 (with an
average of 5.40 out of the 7 point democracy scale of the Freedom House index), with the
exception of Cuba, where a dictatorship still thrives. This shows that the region is mostly
democratic. In Africa, many states are still democratic laggards (with an average score of 3.68
out of the 7 point democracy scale of the Freedom House Index), even if most of the countries
have democratized in the early 1990s. Countries in Africa where political rights and civil rights
are still denied to a large segment of the population include Chad, the Republic of Congo, Cote
d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, and Swaziland. One country in Africa which stands out as
highly democratic is Mauritius, with a thirty-two-year average Freedom House score of 6.9. This
is probably a result of its unique British colonial experience and a stipulation in their constitution
requiring the depoliticization of its military.59
The rest of the Middle East from Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Saudi Arabia to the United
Arab Emirates score below the midpoint of 3.5 over the thirty-two year period (with an average
score of 3.48 out of the 7 point democracy scale of the Freedom House Index) – rendering the
region as having mostly autocratic states, partly as a result of its Rentier-state economic system
and the satisfaction of the mass public with the status quo of state paternalism.60
Table one shows that the most democratic region among developing states based on raw
averages of the Freedom House Index assorted by region is Europe, followed by Latin America,
Asia, Africa and then the Middle East.
From this vantage point, we can see that most of developing world still has many
autocratic states that do not guarantee their citizens full political and civil rights. Indeed, states
that centralize their ruling apparatus accordingly by depriving the civil rights of citizens may be
18
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
prone to political stability. By virtue of using force or the threat of punishment, political
opponents or dissidents of the state are purged, murdered, assassinated, and imprisoned with no
writ of habeas corpus. Hence, the likelihood for further protest or political instability in the long
term is nil because the opposition is muzzled, restrained and becomes immobilized.
To further operationalize the level of democracy in each state, this study also utilizes
other data sources besides the Freedom House Index. In the interest of adding methodological
strength to the analysis, the Vanhanen measure of democracy61
and the polity IV measure62
are
also used in the analysis. T he Vanhanen measure of democracy is considered to be a more
reliable measure of democracy because of its parsimonious nature of conceptualizing democracy,
clear coding rules, inter-coder reliability, replicability, and its utilization of an aggregation
technique that is methodologically sound.63
Scholars consider the Vanhanen measure as
parsimonious because it is grounded on the Dahlian notion of electoral competition and mass
participation in voting.64
The Vanhanen measure looks at democracy as a manifestation of how
competitive national elections are in each sovereign state (the degree to which opposition parties
have a realistic chance of winning elections) and the extent to which citizens exercise their right
to suffrage. For example, the competition variable portrays the electoral success of smaller
parties, that is, the percentage of votes gained by the smaller parties in parliamentary and/or
presidential elections. The political participation variable portrays voter turnout in each election,
and is calculated as the percentage of the total population who actually voted in national-level
elections.65
Vanhanen creates an aggregated index of democracy by multiplying the electoral
success of smaller parties with the percentage of the actual voting age population that
participated in voting in a particular year. The two variables are then multiplied together and
divided by 100 to create a democracy score. Lower score values indicate lower levels of
19
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
democracy, whilst higher score values indicate higher levels of democracy. This article derives
the average Vanhanen score for each of the nation-states in the study from the period years 1975-
2000, which proxies for the level of democracy in each state over a twenty-five-year period.66
By
averaging the Freedom House Index (from 1974-2006) and the Vanhanen measures (from 1975-
2000), this paper obtains the best approximation of the enduring nature of regimes.67
In the interest of determining if democratic age has any effect on levels of political
stability, this paper also employs the Polity IV measure. The Polity IV score is a widely used
measure of democracy that provides the longest measure of democratic performance among
nation-states with a population of more than 500,000 since the 1900s. The Polity IV score is
released by the Center for International Development and Conflict Management that is led by
Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers of the University of Maryland. The democracy measure of
Polity IV generates a score of -10 to +10 for each state based on the extent to how state
institutions are regulated, if there are checks and balances imposed on the executive, if the
executive branch of the centralized state is constrained and restrained by other institutions in the
state (including civil society), if potential candidates for political offices are free to run in
competitive elections regardless of religion, ethnicity, or class, if there is competition and
regulation in political participation, if the nature of the recruitment of political candidates for
elections is based on equity, and if the state allows associational groups in society to participate
in the polity without institutional restraints.68
For this study, the overall democratic age score for
each state is derived by counting the number of years a country scored a +5 through +10 (for at
least two consecutive years) between 1900 and 2004.69
This method of obtaining the prevailing
democratic age from the Polity IV index is consistent with previous work that attempted to
20
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
operationalize institutionalized democratization.70
Thus higher values on this variable serve as a
proxy for states with institutionalized democracies.
The World Bank Governance Indicator measures political stability (Mean1996-2006). 71
Political stability is measured as the likelihood that the current regime will be overthrown by the
use of force; specifically the perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be
destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including the use of domestic
violence and internal terrorism. This measure utilizes aggregate survey data from the World
Economic Global Competitiveness Survey, the Business Environmental Risk Intelligence Global
Risk Service, and the iJET country Security risks ratings. The measure looks at the internal
politics of the state and the extent to how the regime is threatened by internal violence, civil
conflict, terrorism, political unrest in the streets, and military intervention. The measure for
political stability ranges from -2.5 to +2.5, with higher values denoting higher levels of political
stability.
Since the World Bank measure is quite crude in relying on an aggregation technique of
using multiple surveys (based on risk assessments by policy experts)72
, it is worthwhile to
implement another measure of political stability known as the Political Risk Rating provided by
the Political Risk Group (PRG, hereafter).73
The PRG group provides a yearly ranking of
political risk status for more than 100 states investigating the component indicators of
governmental stability, the risk of socio-economic unrest, economic viability, the possibility of
internal and external conflict, military intervention in politics, religious and ethnic tensions, the
breakdown in law and order, and the accountability and bureaucratic quality of states. The PRG
group combines these measures to generate a political risk rating that can range from a minimum
of less than 50 points to a maximum of 100 points. Accordingly, states that achieve less than 50
21
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
points are known to be at risk of a regime breakdown; if state scores somewhere in between 50-
60 points, it is at high risk of a regime breakdown, while those in the 60-70 range are at a
moderate risk of state failure. Countries that score in the 70-80 range are at a low risk of regime
collapse, while those that score in the 80-100 range are at the lowest risk category and are
considered to be politically stable. The average score for each state from 2000-2006 is utilized
as another measure for the dependent variable.74
Bi-Variate Analysis
This analysis begins by examining whether or not there is a relationship between the level
of democracy and democratic age on levels of political stability. Indeed, as the main hypothesis
suggests, higher levels of democracy should elicit higher levels of political instability primarily
because political pluralism can weaken the state’s capacity to govern effectively. However, as
shown in table 2, the simple bi-variate analysis suggests that there is a positive relationship
between levels of democracy and democratic age on the two measures of political stability. This
suggests that states with higher levels of democracy and longer experiences with democracy are
more likely to be politically stable over time. The Freedom House measure shows the highest
level of statistical significance at (b=0.246, p<.01) for the World Bank measure of political
stability and (b=3.214, p<.01) for the Political Risk Rating. Likewise, the co-efficient for the
Polity IV measure of democratic age also shows statistical significance at (b=0.018, p<.05) for
the World Bank measure of political stability and (b=0.186, p<.05) for the Political Risk Rating.
These findings illustrate that nation-states that have a longer experience with democracy are
likely to have higher levels of political stability. Furthermore, the Vanhanen measure of
democracy is also positively correlated with political stability using both the World Bank
measure at (b=.029, p<.05) and the Political Risk Rating at (b=0.359, p<.05). These results
demonstrate that a country’s level of democracy (through electoral competition and political
22
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
participation) has a direct influence on its level of political stability. It appears that countries with
lower levels of democracy (autocratic states) are less likely to be politically stable.
Table 2 Relationship between Democratic Age, Level of Democracy, and Political Stability
Bi-Variate Analysis
Political Stability
Score
(World Bank
1996-2006)
Political Stability
Score
(World Bank
1996-2006)
Political Stability
Score
(World Bank
1996-2006)
Political
Risk Score
(PRS
Group
2000-2006)
Political
Risk Score
(PRS
Group
2000-2006)
Political
Risk Score
(PRS Group
2000-2006)
Freedom House
Measure
(Mean Score
1974-2006)
0.246**
(0.048)
--
--
3.214**
(0.728)
--
--
Democratic Age
(Polity IV
Measure)
(From 1900-
2004)
--
0.018*
(0.007)
--
--
0.186*
(0.093)
--
Vanhanen
measure of
democracy
(Mean score
1975-2000)
--
--
0.029*
(0.011)
--
--
0.359*
(0.162)
Observations 122 122 122 101 101 101
Note: **p<.01; *p<.05; two tailed test; unstandardized coefficients are reported; robust standard
errors in parentheses.75
Nonetheless, no clear patterns can be assumed from this analysis. For instance there is a
need to control for levels of ethnic fractionalization, religious fractionalization, institutional
arrangements, and the role of economic development that can also affect variations on the
dependent variable (political stability).
23
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Multivariate Analysis
OLS regression analysis is used to determine if levels of democracy and democratic age
has a positive or negative effect on political stability. The regression analysis also controls for
levels of economic development (using the natural log of GNP per capita from 1970-1995, as a
way to obviate the endogeneity problem), ethnic fractionalization, religious fractionalization, an
institutional legacy of federalism, and parliamentarism. These control variables may adversely
affect levels of political stability.76
The modeling also employs robust standard errors to mitigate
problems concerning heteroskedasticity. A test for multi-collinearity by examining the Variance
Inflation Factor (VIF) scores suggests that there are no collinear variables utilized in the
modeling as VIF scores are consistently below the numerical value of 2.77
Table 3 shows consistently that all the measures of democracy are correlated to higher
levels of political stability, while controlling for other variables. The results show that highly
democratic states are more likely to experience a decreased likelihood that its regimes will be
overthrown violently. States with higher levels of democracy are also less prone to ethnic
tensions, religious tensions, socio-economic grievances, and military intervention as indicated by
the Political Risk measure of political instability. More specifically, the coefficients of the
Freedom House Index at (b=0.165, p<.01) for the World Bank Measure of political stability and
(b=1.828, p<.05) for the Political Risk Rating illustrate that nation-states that have higher levels
of democracy are more politically stable. The results are confirmed even when one uses
alternative indices of democracy. The co-efficients for the Vanhanen measure at (b=0.008,
p<.05) for the World Bank measure and (b=0.136, p<.05) for the Political Risk Rating also
indicate that democratic states (that have higher levels of electoral competition and political
participation) have a positive relationship with political stability. Lastly, countries that have had
a longer experience with democracy (as reflected by the Polity IV measure) tend to be more
24
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
politically stable since the coefficients of the Polity IV measure for both the World Bank
measure and the Political Risk Rating achieve statistical significance at (p<.05) respectively.
Thus, states with higher levels of political and civic freedoms are more likely to avoid
large-scale political violence; whilst states with lower levels of freedom and political rights are
more likely to encounter political violence. This essentially refutes our aforementioned
hypothesis. Indeed, democracies promote the relative absence of political violence despite
theories linking democracy to populist pressure that can destabilize legitimately elected
governments.
How do the control variables fare in the modeling? Table three shows that economic
wealth as measured by the natural log of the GNP exerts a positive influence on levels of
political stability. Nation states that have higher levels of economic development tend to be more
politically stable over time (generating statistical significance at p<.05 and p<.01 respectively).
Ethnic fractionalization elicits a negative parameter coefficient that is statistically significant
only for the political stability measure of the World Bank (p<.05), suggesting that ethnically
fragmented polities are susceptible to higher levels of political instability. However, ethnic
fractionalization as a variable loses its statistical significance when regressed with the Political
Risk Rating of the PRG group. Furthermore, religious fractionalization does not elicit any
statistical significance, and its parameter coefficients are positive suggesting that religious
pluralism in states promote higher levels of political stability which is confirmation of
secularization theory. For example, adherents of secularization theory argue that religiously
fragmented states tend to be secular and secularism lessens the impact of religion as an
ideological force that can incite political and social discord among groups.78
None of the
institutional variables have any statistically significant relationship with the political stability
25
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
measures. Thus, parliamentarism and federalism, institutional arrangements geared to lessen
regional or group conflict among heterogeneous states79
have substantially no impact on levels of
political stability.
Table 3: The Effect of Democracy and Democratic Age on Political Stability OLS Analysis
Political
Stability
(1996-2006)
Political
Stability
(1996-2006)
Political
Stability
(1996-2006)
Political Risk
Score
(2000-2006)
Political Risk
Score
(2000-2006)
Political Risk
Score
(2000-2006)
Freedom House
Measure
(Mean Score 1974-
2006)
0.165**
(0.056)
-- --
1.828*
(0.701)
-- --
Democratic Age
Polity IV Measure
(From 1900-2004)
--
0.009*
(0.004)
-- --
0.144*
(0.071)
--
Vanhanen measure
of democracy
(Mean score 1975-
2000)
-- --
0.008*
(0.003)
-- --
0.136*
(0.059)
Natural Log of
GNP
0.147*
( 0.061)
0.198**
(0.057)
0.199**
(0.057)
4.258**
(0.740)
4.793**
(0.786)
4.701**
(0.773)
Ethnic
Fractionalization
-.639*
(0.278)
-.604*
(0.293)
-.628*
(0.290)
-5.101
(4.178)
-4.706
(4.267)
-5.076
(4.378)
Religious
Fractionalization
0.301
(0.304)
0.343
(0.310)
0.338
(0.316)
4.898
(4.558)
5.243
(4.632)
4.830
(4.721)
26
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Federalism 0.177
(0.236)
0.180
(0.238)
0.257
(0.244)
-1.172
(2.378)
-2.051
(2.683)
-0.627
(2.431)
Parliamentarism
0.038
(0.081)
0.123
(0.080)
0.126
(0.080)
0.488
(1.136)
1.376
(1.001)
1.358
(1.092)
Constant
-2.006**
(0.440)
-1.884**
(0.421)
-1.866**
(0.421)
25.192**
(6.431)
26.686**
(6.121)
27.855**
(6.182)
F-statistic
6.78**
5.30**
4.96**
8.56**
8.90**
8.24**
Observations 122 122 122 101 101 101
R Square 0.242 0.207 0.195 0.373 0.353 0.340
Root MSE 0.748 0.766 0.771 8.916 9.060 9.146
Note: **p<.01; *p<.05; two tailed test; unstandardized coefficients are reported, robust standard errors in
parentheses.80
To further gauge the impact of democracy on political stability, it is worthwhile to
discuss predicted estimates for each measure of democracy on the two measures of political
stability using Long and Freese’s SPOST function.81
Figure 1-A and Figure 1-B shows that
higher levels of democracy (using the maximalist measure of democracy provided by the
Freedom House) is positively correlated to higher levels of political stability (and lower levels of
political risk), while holding other control variables constant at their means and modes. Even
with the Vanhanen measure, as shown in figures 2-A and 2-B (which uses a more minimalist
criteria of measuring democracy), the same positive effect on political stability is documented,
while holding other control variables at their means and modes. But what is the impact of
democratic age on levels of political stability? Figures 3-A and 3-B provide evidence that polities
that have a longer experience with democratic politics (as measured by the polity score over time
27
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
since 1900-2004) tend to be stable politically over time, while holding other control variables
constant at their means and modes.
Predicted Estimates: The Effect of Level of Democracy on Political Stability
Figure 1-A Using Freedom House Scores
28
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Figure 1-B
Figure 2-A
Using the Vanhanen measure of democracy
29
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Figure 2-B
Figure 3-A
Using Polity Measure (Democratic Age)
30
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Figure 3-B
Discussion and Conclusion
The relationship between democracy and political stability among developing states has
always raised an empirical conundrum that remains unresolved. Using a model of developing
states with varied regime types, it is discovered that polities with higher levels of democracy are
more likely to be politically stable. Further, states that have a longer history of democratic
politics are less likely to see a violent overthrow of their regimes, because they have lower levels
of political risk– ranging from ethnic and religious tensions, socio-economic grievances in the
population, internal and external threats on the regime, and direct military intervention. The
results of this study provide countervailing evidence against the arguments held by many
theorists who posit that democracy is prone to political instability due to the nature of political
pluralism and the rise of populist policies that threaten the state’s capacity to govern effectively.
31
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
Why is it that democratic politics promotes stability while autocratic polities are prone to
higher levels of political instability? The answer may be based on the nature of authoritarian
regimes that continuously repress their people. As Gurr posited, levels of oppression may cause
the population to hold grievances and induce them to rebel.82
The repression of political and civil
rights by the state can in fact facilitate an increase in riots, protests, and civil disturbances aimed
against autocracies. Furthermore, we can glean some validation from the work of James Scott
who claimed that in societies where power is centralized in the hands of the few, the weak and
the disenfranchised will find a way to challenge or supplant the oppressiveness and exclusivity of
the system.83
This points to the civil disturbances that many despotic regimes have experienced
in the past few years.
Since the late 1990s and up until today, spates of riots have occurred in Myanmar in
reaction to the Junta’s inability to control inflation. Most recently in 2007, the sudden increase in
the price of basic commodities spurred pro-democracy movements that many Buddhist monks
have joined. This is not new to Myanmar, as periods of political unrest blighted the early years of
the junta regime. Could it be that repression in autocracies brings about political violence and
instability? Anecdotal evidence in China shows that unrest in the cities periodically happen,
mostly led by students who have protested against the inefficient bureaucracy of the educational
system.84
In Saudi Arabia, there is always a constant threat to the royal family of the Saud
dynasty coming from the Wahabi faction that preaches against the close ties between the royal
family and the United States– in particular allowing US forces to occupy Saudi soil. The Wahabi
movement does not have much legitimacy among the Saudi mass public, but it has an organized
presence in the Shura council (a consultative branch that the King consults on a daily basis).
Experts claim that the extreme Wahabi movement is a direct threat to the stability of the Saud
32
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
family if its social contract in preserving the primacy of Sharia law fails.85
If that occurs a more
fundamentalist regime may dominate the Saudi political system, which may directly see factional
conflict between liberal and conservative forces—which could theoretically lead to political
violence.86
In fact, the 1996 bombings of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia is an indication of
the increased militancy of the Wahabi movement, when the armed group Hezbollah Al-Hejaz
engaged in terror attacks to weaken the legitimacy of the Saud family, which continues until
today. In Yemen, Islamic fundamentalism has been on the rise since the early 1980s and political
riots are commonplace as a result of high food prices and commodities and the realization that oil
resources are incapable of offsetting inflation. Thus, political stability is less likely to dominate
the Yemeni political landscape as oil reserves dwindle.87
Furthermore, in North Korea and Cuba,
long-entrenched dictators have withstood economic sanctions from the West aimed at targeting
their regimes for political change and democratization. However, there is the constant threat of
political instability and the erosion of autocracy’s legitimacy—particularly in the leadership
structure. Because of press censorship, we do not know the extent of mass political protests in
these countries. Political unrest is not covered by the western media, but human rights abuses are
documented and are on the increase in these two countries. Increased reports of human rights
violations in these countries are an indication of public resentment and political unrest in the
streets aimed against state repression.88
The political turbulence and armed conflict in Syria
(which has been ongoing for many years and only now has achieved significant media attention
as a result of the Arab spring uprisings) is also a case that corroborates the findings of this study.
Syria’s autocratic system headed by an ethnic minority royal family and Alawi-based Baath
Party led to the mass mobilization of an aggrieved and disenfranchised majority population that
33
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
has been restive in many years.89
In conclusion, autocratic regimes have a natural tendency to
encounter anti-state movements that directly targets the legitimacy and stability of the state.
What is the theoretical link between dictatorships and the potential for more political
violence and instability? As Lichbach argues, the increased use of violent coercion by state
elements in a dictatorship can lead into large scale political instability.90
Lichbach asserts that,
“An increase in a government regime’s repression of non-violent activity may reduce the level of
non-violent activities of opposition groups but it may increase the level of violent activities
against the state. This results because the relative costs of non-violent activities to the opposition
group have been raised.”91
This same perspective is also highlighted by Federico Ferrera’s
analysis of Myanmar where he shows that increasing repression of an autocratic regime may
facilitate the mobilization of forces among societal groups that can threaten the state’s legitimacy
and thus foment prolonged periods of political instability.92
In the end, repression breeds
rebellion, protests, and organized movements against an autocratic political system.
Finally, this study has several limitations which have implications for future research.
First, of course is the inability to address exhaustively all independent variables that may
influence variations on levels of political stability. For instance, future research should address
whether or not large scale income inequality is at all related in fomenting higher levels of
political instability among developing states as argued by prominent scholars.93
Recent work has
also addressed that the forces of globalization, neoliberalism, economic liberalization, and the
politics of austerity measures have precipitated an increase in political violence in Latin America
and Africa.94
It is worthy of empirical investigation to test if the forces of globalization itself has
a deleterious effect on political stability globally.
34
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
Appendix 1
Summary Statistics
Variable Observations Mean Standard Deviation Minimum Maximum
Political Stability score 122 -0.433 0.838 -2.538 0.9566
Political Risk Measure 101 62.133 10.923 23.50 84.00
Polity IV Democratic
Age (1900-2004) 122 7.926 11.385 0 63.00
Vanhanen level of
democracy
(1975-2000)
122 6.033 6.245 0 25.908
Freedom House level of
Democracy (1974-2006) 122 4.230 1.364 1 6.90
Ethnic Fractionalization 122 0.503 0.248 0 0.930
Religious Fractionalization 122 0.417 0.234 0.002 0.860
GDP per capital (natural log;
1970-1995) 122 6.694 1.143 4.223 9.948
Parliamentarism 122 1.483 0.773 1 3
Federalism 122 0.122 0.329 0 1
Endnotes
1 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transitions and Consolidation:
Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, Press,1996). 2 Giovani Sartori, “How Far Can Free Government Travel?” Journal of Democracy. 6,
no.3 (1995), 101-11.1 P 3Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1968). 4 Juan Linz, Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press,1978). 5 Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkley, CA:
University of California Institute of International Studies, 1979).
35
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
6 Amos Perlmutter and Valerie Bennet, The Political Influence of the Military (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). 7 See Atul Kholi, State Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the
Global Periphery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 8 Bingham Powell, Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability Violence
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1984). 9 Alberto Alesina and Roberto Perotti, “Income Distribution, Political Instability, and
Investment,” European Economic Review 40, no.6 (1996), 1203-28. 10
Robert A. Dahl. Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 11
Ibid., 280-2. 12
Ibid, 283-4. 13
Albert Hirschman, Exit Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and
States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972). 14
Dahl, 1991. 15
Barry Weingast, “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law,” American
Political Science Review 91, no.2, pp. 245-63. 16
Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 17
Powell, 1984. 18
Alesina and Perotti, 1996. 19
Huntington, 1968. 20
Linz, 1978. 21
O’Donnell, 1979. 22
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and
Social Rigidities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982). 23
See for instance works by David Sanders, Patterns of Political Instability (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1981); Steven David, Defending Third World Regimes from Coups
D’Etat, (Lanham, N.Y.:University Press of America, 1985); and Steven David, Third
World Coups D’Etat, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 24
Dipak Gupta The Economics of Political Violence (New York: Praeger Press,1990). 25
Jose Nun, “The Middle Class Coup Revisited,” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed.
Abraham Lowenthal, (New York: Holmes & Meier Publish, 1976). 26
George Ayittey, Africa in Chaos (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 27
David , 1987, 65. 28
Amy Chua, The World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic
Hatred and Global Instability (NY: Doubleday Press, 2005). 29
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 6-7. 30
Andreas Wimmer, “Who Owns the State? Understanding Ethnic Conflict in Post-Colonial
Societies,” Nations and Nationalism 3, no.4 (2004), 631-66. 31
Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van De Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime
Transitions in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp: 62-
3. 32
See, Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, Personal Rule in Africa. (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA
Press, 1982).
36
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
33
See, Richard Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the
Second Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 34
Linz and Stepan, 1996. 35
See Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New
York: WW Norton Press, 2003). 36
See Hazem Beblawi, “The Rentier State in the Arab World” in The Arab State, ed. Giacomo
Luciani, (London: Routledge Press, 1990); Lisa Anderson, “The State in the Middle East North
Africa,” Comparative Politics, 20, no. 1 (1987), 1-18; Benjamin Smith, “Oil Wealth and Regime
Survival in the Developing World: 1960-1999,” American Journal of Political Science, 48, no. 2
(2004), 232-46. 37
Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, 2000, 212. 38
Dahl, 1991, 2000. 39
See Charles Camic, et al. eds., Max Weber's Economy and Society: A Critical Companion
(Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 40
See Henrik Knutsen, “Democracy, Dictatorship and the Protection of Property Rights,”
Journal of Development Studies, 47, no.1 (2011), 164-82; see also David Leblang, “Property
Rights, Democracy and Economic Growth,” Political Research Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1996), 5-26. 41
Knutsen, 2011. 42
See for instance, Christopher Clague, et al. “Property and Contract Rights in Autocracies and
Democracies,” Journal of Economic Growth 1 no.2 (1996), 243-76. See also the arguments of
Douglas North, “Institutions,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 no.1 (1991), 97-112. 43
Yi Feng, “Democracy, Political Stability and Economic Growth,” British Journal of Political
Science 27, no. 3 (1997), 391-418. 44
See Huntington, 1968; Linz, 1978; O’Donnell, 1979; and Olson, 1982. 45
Mark Lichbach, “Deterrence or Escalation: The Puzzle of Aggregate Studies of Repression
and Dissent,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 31, no.2 (1987), 266-97. 46
Donald Horowitz, “Democracy in Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 4, no.4,
(1993),18-38. 47
See Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic
Papers 56, no.4 (2004), 563-95. 48
See Dipak Gupta, Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence (New York: Routledge
Press, 2008). 49
See Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic
Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism,” World Politics 46, no. 1 (1993), 1-
22. 50
See Juan Linz, “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does it make a difference?” in The
Failure of Presidential Democracy, Juan Linz and Samuel Valenzuela, eds. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994). 51
John Gerring, Strom Thacker, and Carola Moreno, “Are Parliamentary Systems Better?,”
Comparative Political Studies 42, no.3 (2009), 327-59. 52
Ibid., 335-6. 53
Erik Wibbels,“Federalism and the Politics of Macroeconomic Policy and Performance,”
American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 4 (2000), 687-702. 54
Jonathan Lemco, Political Stability in Federal Governments (New York: Praeger Press, 1991).
37
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
55
Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shvetsova, Designing Federalism: A Theory
of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 56
The Freedom House organization, headquartered in Washington D. C., is a prominent non-
governmental organization that produces an annual Freedom in the World Report since 1974.
The report assesses the level of political freedoms, civil rights and civil liberties that exist in all
the sovereign states in the world that is frequently cited by academics, journalists, and policy-
makers. 57
Maximalist definitions of democracy tap not only the procedural definition of democracy
concerning contestation and participation as Robert Dahl proposed, but it also defines democratic
polities that grant citizens unrestricted political and civil rights. See for instance, Seymour
Martin Lipset and Jason Lakin, The Democratic Century (Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 2004). 58
See Gerardo Munck and Jay Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy:
Evaluating Alternative Indices,” Comparative Political Studies 35, no.1 (2002), 5-34. 59
William Miles, “The Mauritius Enigma,” Journal of Democracy 10, no.2 (1999), 91-104. 60
Zakaria, 2003. 61
The Vanhanen measure of democracy from 1975-2000 is available at the following url site:
http://www.fsd.uta.fi/english/data/catalogue/FSD1289/meF1289e.html. 62
The Polity IV measure is developed by Marshall and Jaggers (2001). The data for the
democracy-autocracy score from 1900-2004, is available at this url site:
http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm. 63
See Munck and Verkuilen, 2002, 5-34. 64
Ibid., 27-9. 65
See Tatu Vanhanen, Democratization: A Comparative Analysis of 170 Countries (London:
Routledge Press, 2003). 66
Data for the Vanhanen index is available at:
http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Governance/Vanhanens-index-of-democracy/Polyarchy-
Dataset-Downloads/. 67
See Grigore Pop-Eleches, “Historical Legacies and Post-Communist Regime Change,”
Journal of Politics. 69, no. 4 (2007), 908–26; Robert Woodberry, “The Missionary Roots of
Liberal Democracy,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012), 244-74; John Gerring
and Strom Thacker, “Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and
Parliamentarism,” British Journal of Political Science 34, no.1 (2004), 295–300. 68
Refer to the following website for a complete methodological discussion of Polity IV’s
democracy score construction.
http://www.fsd.uta.fi/english/data/catalogue/FSD1289/meF1289e.html. 69
John Gerring and Strom Thacker also employed the same operationalization of democratic age
in their study of unitarism’s effect on political corruption. See John Gerring and Strom Thacker,
2004. 70
Ibid., 297. 71
For the methodological procedure in formulating the measure, see Kauffman, Kraay,et al.
(2007). Measures of Governance Indicators. World Bank. Data Available at:
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi2007/ 72
See Criticisms of the World Bank Governance measure by Carmen Apaza, “Measuring
Governance and Corruption through the Worldwide Governance Indicators: Critiques, Responses
38
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1
and Ongoing Scholarly Discussion,” PS: Political Science and Politics 42, no.1 (2009), 139-43;
see also, Marcus Kurtz and Andrew Shank, “Growth and Governance: Models, Measures, and
Mechanisms,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 2 (2007), 538-54. 73
Data provided by the Political Risk Services Group: The Political Risk Measure (2000-2006);
website http://www.prsgroup.com/ICRG_Methodology.aspx#PolRiskRating. 74
The dependent variables utilized in this study are constrained by data unavailability in certain
time periods. For example, the World Bank measure for Political Stability was released starting
in 1996 until 2006, while the Political Risk Group only has available data on the Political Risk
Rating since 2000 until 2006. Thus, this explains why the two dependent variables have different
time frames. Despite the World Bank measure having longer time duration than the PRG data,
both measures have a high Pearson’s r correlation coefficient of 0.865 indicating that both
dependent variables are highly correlated and are concomitantly measuring the same concept. 75
Observations drop to 101 when using the Political Risk Rating because data is not available for
the following countries: Afghanistan, Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Central African Republic,
Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Macedonia,
Mauritius, Nepal, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. 76
Data for religious and ethnic fractionalization is derived from Alberto Alesina et al.,
“Fractionalization,” Journal of Economic Growth 8 (2003), 155-94. The ethnic
fractionalization and religious fractionalization scores range from 0 to 1 where higher
scores connote higher levels of ethnic or religious heterogeneity. Data for the natural log
of GNP (avg. 1970-1995) per capita is derived from La Porta, Rafael et al. “The Quality
of Growth,” Journal of Law and Economics and Organization 15, no.1 (1998), 222–79;
Data for parliamentarism is derived from Gerring and Thacker, 2004, where they coded
each country’s prevailing governmental system based on a trichotomous measure:
1=presidential system, 2=semi-presidential system, and 3=parliamentary system (for
missing data I extrapolated the level of parliamentarism by referring to each country’s
constitution in the panel study and I assessed the strength of parliamentarism from the
last two decades). Data for Federalism is derived from the Database of Political
Institutions collected by Phil Keefer, where countries with subnational units that have the
authority to tax, spend and legislate are coded as 1, all else 0. The data is available at
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,content
MDK:20649465~pagePK:64214825~piPK:64214943~theSitePK:469382,00.html 77
John Fox, Applied Regression Analysis, Linear Models, and Related Models (Thousand
Oaks, CA: University of California Press, 1997). 78
See Jonathan Fox, “Are Some Religions More Conflict-Prone Than Others?,” Jewish Political
Studies Review 16, no.1-2 (Spring 2004). 79
See Lemco, 1991; Stepan and Skach, 1993. 80
Observations drop to 101 when the Political Risk Rating is used because data is not available
for the following countries: Afghanistan, Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Central African Republic,
Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Macedonia,
Mauritius, Nepal, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan . 81
See Scott Long and Jeremy Freese, Regression Models for Categorical Outcomes Using Stata,
Second Edition. (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2005). 82
Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970).
39
Tusalem: Democracies, Autocracies, & Political Stability
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2015
83
James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 84
China Post Story. 2006. “College Students Riot in China,” Accessed at:
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/2006/06/20/84415/College-students.htm. 85
Natana DeLong- Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008). 86
See Jean-Francois, Seznec. “Stirrings in Saudi Arabia” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4
(2002), 33-40. 87
Owen Barron, “Things Fall Apart: Violence and Poverty in Yemen,” Harvard International
Review (Summer, 2008). Available at url: http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1763/ 88
Dursun Peksen, “Better or Worse? The Effect of Sanctions on Human Rights,” Journal of
Peace Research, 46, no. 1 (2009), 59-77. 89
Hinnebusch, Raymond, "Syria: From Authoritarian Upgrading’ to Revolution?" International
Affairs 88, no.1 (2012), 95–113. 90
Lichbach,1987, 266-97. 91
Ibid., 29. 92
Federico Ferrera, “Why Regimes Create Disorder Hobbes's Dilemma During a Rangoon
Summer,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 47, no.3 (2003), 302-25. 93
See Alesina and Perrotti, 1996; Edward Muller et al., “Economic Determinants of
Democracy”, American Sociological Review 60, no. 6 (1995), 966-82. 94
Moises Arce and Paul Bellinger, “Low-Intensity Democracy Revisited: The Effects of
Economic Liberalization on Political Activity in Latin America,” World Politics 60, no. 1 (2007)
97-121; Earl Conteh-Morgan “Globalization, State Failure, and Collective Violence: The Case of
Sierra Leone,” International Journal of Peace Studies 11 no.2 (2006), 87-103; Peadar Kirby,
Vulnerability and Violence: The Impact of Globalizatio, (New York: Pluto Press, 2005).
40
International Social Science Review, Vol. 90 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 1
http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss1/1